Happy Day Mommy & Daddy

Clayton & I have been married for five years now. I love my life and I couldn't imagine it without my husband and the sweet little boy we brought into our family. This morning we went to the Arbor Hills Nature preserve for some exploring and this evening we will go out for an entertaining dinner at Japon Steak & Sushi. We will sit at the Hibachi grill so Oliver will hopefully be amazed by the fire and the chef. Here are some picture from our day:




some nature pictures from the preserve:


A few of the parks around here have these huge red swings and Oliver can barely hold the chains, but he loves them! He has always loved swinging, but now every time he sees one of these, he wants to swing and I can barely get him out! Here is a video of him in the swing:

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And some of the family before and during dinner:

Oliver's word usage during his 21'st month

Oliver, Mommy & Daddy had become so adept at signing with each other, that we almost preferred that language over words as we could understand exactly what Oliver needed or wanted. After taking an inventory of words that Oliver used at 21 months, we noticed that Oliver was only speaking words that he didn't have signs for. Clayton & I decided about 3 weeks ago, that he and I were going to stop signing and stop creating new signs for Oliver to use and be more focused on encouraging word usage. We still allow Oliver to communicate in signs, but now we are pushing even harder on encouraging him to try to say the word instead of use the sign. What a difference that has made. Oliver's word usage is increasing so quickly that I can't even keep up a list now. And now he has stopped using a lot of his signs.

So, as Oliver approaches his 22nd month birthday tomorrow, I have decided to update my blog: I have removed the sidebar with the words list, and will instead keep this list of words he used during his 21st month: Ace, ba ba (lamby), bagel, ball, blue, boo, boom, bye bye, cook, cookie, corn, dada, day, done, down, duck, Emmy, gala, garage, go, grandpa, grape, green, Gude (his friend Jude), gum, happy, hi, high, hiding, kitchen, kiwi, mama, meow, milk, moo, more, mow, na na (egg and gum), no, oh no, oh yeah, otter, paint, pan, pear, peas, pink, pizza, pooh, puppy, red, slide, ta da, tigger, uh oh, waffle, work, wow, yeah and yes.

And this list of baby signs he used during and before his 21st month: all done, alligator, ant, apple, baby, ball, balloon, banana, bath, bear, bib, big boy, bird, book, brush, bubble, bug, bunny, butterfly, car, cat, caterpillar, cheerio, cheese, chicken, clean, clock, cold, come here, computer, cookie, cow, cracker, danger, diaper, dog, down, drink, duck, eat, elephant, fan, fish, flag, flower, frog, garbage, garbage truck, gentle, giraffe, glasses, hat, help, horse, hot, ice cream, juice, just right, lawn mower, light, lion, milk, monkey, moon, more, noise, outside, phone, pig, plane, please, push, quiet, rain, sad, sleep, slide, snow, sorry, spider, sprinkler, stars, stinky, stop, swing, thank you, tooth brush, tractor, train, tree, truck, turtle, up, vacuum, wash hands, water, and where is it?